On Cloning

"There is a growing conviction that research is subject only to the laws that it chooses for itself and that it is limited only by its own possibilities. This is the case, for example, in attempts to legitimise human cloning for supposedly therapeutic ends." --Pope Benedict XVI

"The current state of the [therapeutic cloning] technology is such that literally hundreds of human ooctyes [eggs] from young women will be required to generate a single human embryonic stem cell line. Therefore we consider it more appropriate to use non-human oocytes from livestock as a surrogate." --Dr. Stephen Minger, director of the Stem Cell Biology Laboratory King's College, London

"Today, Melbourne Cup Day 2006, we entered the new race to clone a human. We gave sanction to distinguishing between two kinds of embryo - one born to live, the other created to die."--Australian Senator Ron Boswell on the Australian Senate vote to legalize therapeutic cloning

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Cloning represents a very clear, powerful, and immediate example in which we are in danger of turning procreation into manufacture." --Leon Kass, former Chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics

"The slippery slope is sliding away even before we know whether humans can actually be cloned. And of course, even if we could do "therapeutic" reproductive cloning, it wouldn't be very long before the solipsistic began to demand the right to enhance their offspring to fit parental desires--backed by many bioethicists and members of the scientific establishment who only oppose reproductive cloning now because it isn't 'safe.'" --Wesley J. Smith, lawyer and author of Consumer's Guide to the Brave New World

"I understand why people are seeking healing for their children; however, I cannot justify a biblical reason that would make it acceptable to create the person you love, in identical form, for the purpose of harvesting the stem cells that cause the destruction of the clone. 'Clone and Kill' research is unethical and we are urging Mississippi to embrace a culture of life by respecting the sanctity of all human life. Healing for the same individuals can be obtained through ethical stem-cell research. If it were not human life, it would not produce human stem cells."

--Terri Herring, president of Pro-Life Mississippi

"Human cloning belongs to the eugenics project and is thus subject to all the ethical and juridical observations that have amply condemned it." --Reflections on Cloning, Pontificia Academia Pro Vita

"Proponents of therapeutic cloning have set up reproductive cloning as the greater of two evils and then insisted that the public must choose one. This leaves the public with therapeutic cloning as the lesser evil. In fact, we can decide to reject them both as evils, but I see reproductive cloning as the lesser of the two presented evils. Instead of promoting deaths, it promotes life; although, of course, the nature of cloned lives raise many deep concerns and fears." --James Sherley Ph.D., professor of biological engineering at MIT.

"...methods that fail to respect the dignity and value of the person must always be avoided. I am thinking in particular of attempts at human cloning with a view to obtaining organs for transplants: these techniques, insofar as they involve the manipulation and destruction of human embryos, are not morally acceptable, even when their proposed goal is good in itself.." -- Pope John Paul II

"Anything other than a total ban on human cloning would be virtually impossible to enforce. Cloned human embryos created for research would be widely available in laboratories and embryo farms. Once cloned embryos were available, implantation would take place. Even the tightest regulations and strict policing would not prevent or detect the birth of cloned babies." --President George W. Bush

"Cloning is cloning. That is why it should all be illegal." --Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA)

"There is no ethical way to try to discover whether cloning-to-produce-children can become safe now or in the future." --President's Council on Bioethics

"If the primary moral objection to reproductive cloning is that it will likely result in genetic error in reprogramming, then of course we want research to prevent that kind of problem. But how do we do that? The best way is to see how cloned embryos develop and to study them, gestating them in female chimpanzees, artificial wombs, or human volunteers, then aborting them to see which are normal and which are not, then experimenting to see how to create only normally developing embryos/fetuses." --Gregory Pence, Ph.D., bioethicist and cloning advocate

"My decision to clone myself should not be the government's business, or Cardinal O'Conner's, anymore than a woman's decision to have an abortion is. Cloning is highly significant. Its part of the reproductive rights of every human being." --Randy Wicher, cloning activist

"With artificial insemination, acceptance took decades; with in vitro fertilization, it took years. The attitude toward cloning shifted in a matter of months." --Lori B. Andrews, reproductive rights lawyer

"To say that embryos are not persons and can be killed in private but cannot be studied and killed in research is contradictory. Perhaps this shows once again that the cloning debate is really about abortion." --Gregory Pence Ph.D., bioethicist and cloning advocate